Young, Black, & Dead

By Brian Webber

While the rest of the world was busy concerning themselves with the wedding of two mediocre actors in Italy, a disturbing pattern was playing out yet again in New York City. A young father with two children, Sean Bell was shot to death outside of his bachelor party after he allegedly run into a police car with his own, the day before he was to be married. This man has something in common with other unarmed men shot to death in the past few years by the NYPD.

He was young, and he was black, and he was shot multiple times, by officers who not only emptied their guns, but reloaded their semi-automatic weapons, another victim of what the New York Times calls “contagious shooting.” Contagious shooting is “gunfire that spreads among officers who believe that they, or their colleagues, are facing a threat. It spreads like germs, like laughter, or fear. An officer fires, so his colleagues do, too. The phenomenon appears to have happened last year, when eight officers fired 43 shots at an armed man in Queens, killing him. In July, three officers fired 26 shots at a pit bull that had bitten a chunk out of an officer’s leg in a Bronx apartment building. And there have been other episodes: in 1995, in the Bronx, officers fired 125 bullets during a bodega robbery, with one officer firing 45 rounds” (New York Times, Wilson, Nov 27 2006).

Let’s set aside for the time being the immorality of scattershot weapons being used in civilian areas. What’s next, dropping cluster bombs on meth labs? Why do we never see this happening in white neighborhoods? Why are they using flash grenades on elderly black women in no-knock raids who then die of a heart attack (Garvey & Haberman, Apr 2 2004).? Why are they firing 50+ shots at a car (and only hitting it 21 times, 31 from one officer) when according to one eyewitness, the cops "jumped out shooting…there was no 'Stop.' No 'freeze.' No nothing" (As qtd. in I see only one conclusion.

The NYPD is out of control, and this can only lead to the deaths of more civilians, and good cops as well, who are probably fewer in number today (does anyone think that the kind of cop who would shoot an unarmed kid more times than he has fingers would’ve been one of the officers who ran into the burning World Trade Center towers on 9/11?).

As New York City Councilman Charles Barron puts it, “Don't ask us to ask our people to be peaceful while they are being murdered. We're not the only ones that can bleed” (As qtd. in Colagrossi, The sentiment is hard to disagree with. I’m not in any way advocating the murder of police officers in any way shape or form, but murder of cops is what’s going to happen if something isn’t done about corrupt police departments everywhere, starting with the NYPD, arguably the most well known police department in the country, as the model.

We need to start by holding cops accountable. The cops who shot at Amadou Diallo 41 times in 1999 were acquitted for shooting an African immigrant who was reaching for his identification, only hitting him 19 times (the dangerous “spray and pray” method). The cops involved in the Bell shooting not only killed Bell, but injured two of the other men in the car, as well as two Transit Authority workers on a train station that was hit by stray bullets (as I said, out of 51 shots, less than half actually hit the car, and this is in a residential neighborhood in Queens). Will they be held accountable?

Second, stop militarizing the police force. The increase in violent crime is tied to the increase of use of SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams from the 1980s to the 1990s according to the CATO Institute.

Third, put protections in place for whistleblower cops. Cops who speak out on corruption in their own department are often harassed by their superiors, denied earned promotions, and sometimes even fired. Sometimes, even physical violence results. According to the Buffalo News in an editorial that was no longer available on their website as of this writing, two Buffalo NY officers “got into a fistfight while trying to control the situation, … Officers Cariol J. Horne and Greg M. Kwiatkowski - both on duty and in uniform - threw punches at each other on the driveway of a home on Walden Avenue near Sumner Place, according to police and witnesses. … The fight was reportedly sparked when Horne tried to prevent Kwiatkowski from making an arrest, police sources say. Other witnesses say Kwiatkowski and a second officer were using excessive force to arrest a man by wrestling with him on the ground and beating him repeatedly with a police baton, and Horne was trying to stop him” (The Randi Rhodes Show Message Board, Nov 28 2006).

Fourth, put an end to these no knock warrants, which far too often send heavily armed officers to the wrong address. If you are a gun owning person, it’s 4 AM, and you hear your door being broken down, and rustling in the living room and the police have not identified themselves, what are you going to do?

But above all that is accountability. All it takes is for one corrupt or reckless cop to be indicted and convicted for at the very least depraved indifference, which I consider using military grade assault weapons in a residential area to be, and the message will be sent. We the people will no longer stand up for bad cops.